UPDATE: The City of Davenport has confirmed the bodies of Brandon Colvin, Ryan Hitchcock and Daniel Prien were recovered at the site of the partially collapsed building in Davenport. For more on the story, click here.
UPDATE: Local 4 News has confirmed through the family that the body of Branden Colvin Sr. was recovered at the site of the partially collapsed building in Davenport on June 3.
Iowa Task Force One — a search and rescue team — has worked over the past day to help in the Davenport building collapse at 324 Main St.
The Cedar Rapids-based team was mobilized through a request by Davenport’s Incident Command Team to provide assistance through the Iowa Department of Homeland Security for a comprehensive urban search and rescue team.
Iowa’s two divisions of Iowa Task Force One – based in Cedar Rapids and Sioux City — both mobilized and arrived on-scene as quickly as possible, the city said Friday. Total personnel on-site is approximately 45, tasked with completing a reconnaissance of the building to search for survivors and those presumed to have perished in Sunday’s building collapse. Three men are feared dead: Ryan Hitchcock, Branden Colvin and Daniel Prien.
“That search was completed before sundown last night and that allowed us to move to the next phase of our mission, shoring and securing the building for controlled recovery,” the city release Friday said. “Iowa Task Force 1 has installed shoring on the exterior walls and we are continuing to work with on-site commanders to provide search and recovery capabilities in accordance with their needs.
Iowa Task Force One will remain on site and engaged with this process until further notice.
“We’ve had some challenges with utilities and infrastructure in the area,” Davenport Fire Chief Mike Carlsten said Friday, noting MidAmerican Energy had a 13,000-volt transformer at the building that had to be removed.
“We had to make sure we had to eliminate that transformer and take it out of the circuit,” Carlsten said. “For them, it took several days.”
The department got control of that area Thursday night, allowing search and rescue teams to do their work.
Rick Halleran, chief of the Cedar Rapids-based Iowa Task Force One, started working on site on Sunday night, the day of the collapse. They continued on site Thursday, with a team of 50 workers, to search for survivors and fatalities.
“We had to get some groundwork and things in place before we could have the team back,” Carlsten said. “The first 24 to 36 hours we were there, the facility was in a constant state of motion and we had to allow the building to settle before we could formalize a solid plan before we could have their team come back in and actually move forward.”
“This is a really dynamic situation – not just for the city of Davenport and the state, but all across the country,” Halleran said. “This is a large-scale event, and moving accurately from the start to where we’re at now takes time. And we need to be concerned for those who are on site working.”
“We do what the building tells us to do,” he said. “This building is very dynamic.”
The only day there wasn’t searching for people was Wednesday.
“This is a very dynamic situation, very fluid,” Carlsten said. “We are doing the best we can to balance the building conditions and the safety of our responders.”
“Something this large, we’re looking at days or weeks of how we have to do things, because it’s a very thoughtful process that we have to move through and look at all the ‘what-ifs’ before we make decisions,” he said.
When Mayor Mike Matson was asked if he would trust living in that building himself, he couldn’t answer the question.
“I’m terribly upset, sorrowful at what happened. My head has been in a lot of places,” he said. “All we can do is try and do the best we can.” He would not say if any human remains have yet been discovered.
Many residents feel they aren’t being heard and Matson was asked if he would hold a town hall and answer their questions directly.
“I have met with the families; that’s where the focus is,” he said, telling the media Friday: “I’m talking with you every day.”
Chief Carlsten said he’s spoken with officials in Miami-Dade County in Florida, and other communities for advice on dealing with the situation.
On June 24, 2021, a 12-story beachfront condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Fla., partially collapsed, causing the deaths of 98 people. Four people were rescued from the rubble, but one died of injuries shortly after arriving at the hospital.